Despite the extensive research on bilingual development, our understanding of how lexical competition unfolds in the bilingual mind remains limited. Previous studies have predominantly focused on crosslinguistic competition, neglecting the examination of the competition process within each language and the influence of diverse bilingual…

In this article, we examine various strategies used to express cardinal numbers in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs) from three historically unrelated communities in Yucatán, Mexico: Chicán, Nohkop, and Cepeda Peraza. Our findings describe some numeral strategies, which remained unattested in previous accounts, and demonstrate that YMSL numerals…

English is often assumed to be the national language in the US and the global language in the world; yet such views fail to address the complex linguistic repertoires of people living in linguistically heterogeneous places even within the US. Spotlighting a southwestern US border town, we provide a critique of both nation-state-language ideology,…

Speakers must command different linguistic registers to index various social-discourse elements, including the identity of the addressee. Previous work found that English-learning children could link registers to appropriate addressees by 5 years. Two experiments found that better cues to the linguistic form or to the social meaning of register…

This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise that TESOL educators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second-grade classroom…

This article examines the ways in which a multimodal text--a YouTube video on globalization and business--was mediated in two English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classrooms, and how these mediations shaped the instructor's and her students' meaning-making in specific ways. I first explore the complex multimodal discourses involved with this…

Adult education ESOL teachers usually know a lot about learners' lives inside the classroom, but they are less aware of learners' lives outside that space. This article focuses on learner talk about "Ingles Sin Barreras," a heavily advertised English-language program for Spanish-speakers who want to learn English. I analyzed learner talk…

This article contains a description of the Dual Proficiency (DP) program in an urban elementary school located in the heart of a large south-western city, as well as the teachers who designed and now implement DP, and the immigrant community participating by choice in DP. We write from a context where, ironically, the number of English language…

Moroleon, Guanajuato (Mexico), is an industrial city on the Mexican Plateau. People from the surrounding hamlets known as rancherias frequently seek employment in the city. However, many men with low levels of education travel to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, to work on mushroom farms. A study explored the use of English in these two communities.…

Documents attitudes toward English, Spanish, and Spanish-English code-switching in Juarez, Mexico. This paper refutes the notion that there are two orientations--integrative and instrumental--toward English as a second language, but it supports assumptions regarding the relationship between attitudes and use and the impact of local milieu on…

A Chicana bilingual teacher from Arizona lived with a middle-class Mexican family during a 5-week Mexican immersion program. Her complaints about "harsh reactions" toward her and her Spanish showed how her use of a few stigmatized characteristics of nonstandard Spanish were judged by standard Spanish speakers to indicate an uneducated…

This study of a group of American teenagers living in Mexico uses a series of questionnaires to measure their degree of bilingualism (in English and Spanish) and biculturalism (in American and Mexican culture). The main hypotheses of this investigation were: (1) after five or more years in Mexico, the teenage subjects will be at least functionally…

In a small Mexican town with a sizeable English-speaking population and bilingual schools, some native Spanish speakers develop native-like proficiency in English. Interviews found that the only Spanish speakers acquiring much English attended bilingual schools and frequently had close friendships with native English speakers and favorable…

Describes features of articulatory shortcuts discovered among middle class, educated native speakers of Spanish in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. It is maintained that these features should be taught to students of Spanish in order that they may understand colloquial Spanish speech. (AM)

Spanish, English, and American Indian languages in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico and bilingualism and language contact in the region are addressed in a collection of articles. Approaches to research in the languages of this region are discussed in articles by Valdes, Lope Blanch, and Brandt. Cultural and sociolinguistic…